This month, Pablo Heras-Casado conducts the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal on May 8 & 9 in a program of Tchaikovsky, Dutilleux, and Debussy. Heras-Casado will conduct the first two movements from Debussy’s Nocturnes: Nuages (“Clouds”) and Fêtes (“Festivals”). Debussy’s work was inspired by a series of impressionist paintings, also entitled Nocturnes by the American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler....

“A luminous and urgent performance, deftly balancing the shifts from moody ruminations to bouts of exuberance.... Heras-Casado is the thinking person’s idea of a hotshot young conductor.” - The New York Times

“Gripping from start to finish: That was Thursday night’s Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert. One of the most impressive guest conductors in the 2017-18 season, the Spaniard Pablo Heras-Casado was back on the podium for a hefty program of the Brahms Violin Concerto and the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique. Again, he impressed with deeply musical performances, but they were exciting, too.

Both Pouliot and Heras-Casado warmly shaped the concerto’s more melodic parts, giving just the right catch-breaths, daringly stretching major transitions without ever overdoing them.”